


The Felling Of The Lamps

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Probably butchered Middle Earth history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you can not imagine it,” Thorin had hummed near Bilbo’s ear, “What it was like for all the world to suddenly be cast back into darkness, it was very much like this.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Felling Of The Lamps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livx18 (Jensensational)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jensensational/gifts).



> I wrote a thing for Livx18. I don't think she'll mind if I share it with the rest of y'all.

When the time comes for Bilbo to write it all down, to dictate the journey that has burned itself into his heart and mind like a brand, he finds that the words to describe it all simply do not exist. He tries, many times, to write it the way it was. The gritty, grim truth sticks the ink to his quill, however, and he does not dare to force it onto the page. Bound with leather and years, the manuscript is meant to be shared with very few, and most who read it will not know the difference anyways. 

What little he’s told of his adventures is a thin, picked apart version. At first, Bilbo convinces himself that he does this to spare innocent ears and minds. Later, he admits that the reason is because he’s greedy. He hoards the truth close to him, his chest, his heart, and tucks it away from the rest of the world. 

Of certain companions, Bilbo tells very little. He describes nobility, courage, and strength with a flat, carefully distant tone that betrays nothing. There are no passages detailing the sharp shock of meeting eyes in the doorway of Bag End, or the fierce coil of anger-turned-passion that swelled in him over the words, “Why did you come back?” The elation of an embrace just inside of Beor’s lands is entirely left out. He does not pen the warmth shared on bitterly chilled nights, and does not have it in him to spin out the words exchanged there either. 

And when it comes down to it, when all that’s left to write is the shuddering, stilling, final heartbeat, the words finally come to him.

When Thorin died, the lamps were felled all over again. Of the rest of Middle Earth, the Hobbits know very little. They are more concerned with their own affairs than the history of the ground they build their homes in. He heard the tale of the Lamps of Valar from Thorin himself, and had at been both awed and horrified by it. 

Bilbo remembers how it was whispered to him over firelight. The tale, Thorin said, was best told that way with only the flames to grant visibility in the darkness. “Dwarves don’t care, though,” he’d made sure to add, looking a bit puffed with pride. “If the sun had never been shaped we would not have noticed. We were born to dwell in the roots of the earth, not upon it.” The lamps were erected over the land, one in the north and the other in the south, to cast light upon the shadowed, cold world. Christened Illuin and Ormal, they ruled the sky for uncountable years before they were destroyed in a great battle. “If you can not imagine it,” Thorin had hummed near Bilbo’s ear, “What it was like for all the world to suddenly be cast back into darkness, it was very much like this.”

And then he’d thrown his great fur-lined coat over the fire and laughed while Bilbo shrieked in fear as they were plunged into the smoke-filled night together.

The lamps, the light, was snuffed out the minute Thorin’s heart failed and his hand slipped from Bilbo’s. Bilbo felt them, heard the cracking of the towering stone posts, and the shatter of the ground as the lamps fell, crushing the earth beneath their fire and illumination before flickering out forever. Bilbo shook with it, his whole frame heaving with grief-stricken, wailing sobs. He begged,  he screamed, and he clung to Thorin for all he was worth. The lamps had been felled. He’d been left in the darkness with no way out, no light left to guide his way back. The lamps had been felled, and no king or god was there to bring the sun into the world. 

Tears can not relight the Lamps of Valar.

And heartache can not wake the dead.

He rips the pages out over and over again, scatters them around his room in Rivendell until he has no strength left in his ageing limbs. At the end of it all, he writes what little he can bear. It’s detached, it’s blunt, and Bilbo is fine with that. 

_  
_

_“He wept until his eyes were red and his voice was hoarse.”_


End file.
